I recently saw a “best mobile apps for the job search” post, where eight or nine out of the ten were job board apps. And I think a third of the list were apps that you had to pay for (up to $25/month).
I look at those lists hoping that somehow the author included JibberJobber… alas, this one didn’t.
As I kept going through the list, though, my thoughts shifted.
WHY in the world are these authors… supposed experts, or at least people who have done unbiased and thorough research (because that is what we expect the news to be, unbiased and thorough), say that if I’m a job seeker, I should use these ten apps?
Most of them are duplicating what the others do. I do NOT need eight apps that do the same thing (show me job openings).
Furthermore, why is 80% of this list promoting job boards? According to the real experts… people who have spent decades in this field (including Dick Bolles, Nick Corcodilos, Dave Perry, and dozens of others), you shouldn’t spend all, most, or even much of your time on job boards… or applying to jobs!
Make no mistake, job boards (and the adjacent businesses) constitute a multi-billion dollar industry. Their customer is HR (recruiters, companies). They serve their customer. They do not serve job seekers.
You see, to them, job seekers are transitory. A job seeker comes, many times doesn’t create an account or upload a resume, and then goes away. When the job seeker lands a job, they go away for years and years. The job seeker (a) doesn’t stick around and (b) usually doesn’t pay.
But the mainstream media, the writers who are not researchers, put together a list of “oh use this app, and this one that does the same thing, and here are six more that do the exact same thing… and yippee, you only have to pay $4.95 for this one and $24.95 for that one, but it’s worth it, right?” A job seeker would only have to pay about $100 a month to have all of these duplicate apps clogging their phone, for a technique/method that is supposedly about 2% effective.
All the while, you can feel good about your job search, and avoid networking, or any of the really effective job search techniques.
I wish the writers of these articles, and the editors who are responsible for this dribble, would get serious about job search strategies, tactics, and tools.
What they write has an impact, especially on the new job seekers, who haven’t been in job search mode for many years (or, ever).
Alas, I am not holding my breath. But I hope that you, my readers and JibberJobber users, are not buying into it. This job of getting job takes a lot of work that you can’t avoid by downloading an app. Or ten apps.
True! A lot of these app roundups are virtually (actually?) advertorials. They do more for the app companies than for the reader/jobseeker. To look for jobs (and that should be a small % of your job search time), I recommend Indeed and Linkup – which are aggregators; they search all those boards like Monster etc. – plus LinkedIn. That will give you exposure to the vast majority of what’s out there.
Thanks Thea. I agree. Indeed seems to own the market on job postings, and LinkUp provides a nice twist (aggregator from company boards, which should mean that they are real, genuine jobs, but we all know that some companies post fake jobs for various reason).